Sexism, Tourism and Poverty Topics of Best Marketing in ‘2018 WARC 100’

Marketers get it now. Consumers don’t care about their products until the brands demonstrate they care about them. So brand values — combating sexism and poverty, for example — were the topics of the campaigns, rather than laundry detergent and dryers.

If brands have a credible role in the lives of consumers, they’ll respond to marketing when they see purpose-driven campaigns, brands and agencies, finds the "2018 WARC 100," which is “an annual global index of the world’s top marketing campaigns and companies based on their business impact.” This purpose-driven approach to marketing was the top trend WARC spotted in its ranking released on Feb. 26.

WARC also noticed brands incorporating public relations and long-term strategies, rather than quick wins to please quarterly earnings watchers, in their marketing.

Being the world’s top spender on advertising doesn’t guarantee a spot in the WARC 100, but Procter & Gamble did execute the most effective marketing campaign, the announcement reveals. And U.S.-based campaigns, brands and agencies did take 36 of the top 100 spots, with the U.K. and Australia both landing a dozen wins each.

Advertising behemoth Unilever, though, went for the threepeat as WARC’s Most Effective Advertiser. WARC says: “Unilever has four campaigns in the top 100 — Lifebuoy’s ‘#HelpAChildReach5,’ Knorr’s ‘Love At First Taste,’ ‘The Vaseline Healing Project’ and ‘The radicalisation of Persil’ — with a further 50 campaigns across all competitions contributing to its tally.”

"2018 WARC 100" North American top campaigns | Credit: WARC by WARC

The findings show:

“The top-ranked campaign, ‘Dads #ShareTheLoad’ by BBDO India for Ariel Matic, Procter & Gamble’s premium laundry detergent brand, built on its previous ‘Share the Load’ campaign by persuading dads to do more laundry in order to promote gender equality. Ariel Matic generated a 42 percent increase in unaided brand awareness, $12.3 million in earned media coverage, and conversations on social media and sales growth in excess of previous campaigns.”

“In second place is ‘The Swedish Number’ by INGO Stockholm for The Swedish Tourist Association, which manages hotels and hostels across Sweden. The purely PR-driven approach saw more than 32,000 Swedes sign up to take more than 200,000 calls from abroad, helping STF boost its renewal figures and attract new members.” (The campaign description on the WARC site is: “Helping Swedes feel proud of their country through an app connecting foreigners to ordinary Swedes.”)

“Ranked third is the ‘Care Counts’ campaign for Whirlpool by DigitasLBi Chicago. The appliances manufacturer installed washers and dryers in schools to give disadvantaged students access to laundry facilities, resulting in 90 percent of the participants increasing their school attendance rate. The [program] has been expanded to nearly 60 schools across the U.S.”